


Tales of the Slayer: Wendigo

by DonSample



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 08:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4913158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonSample/pseuds/DonSample
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Slayer is called in pre-Columbian North America</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Called

**Author's Note:**

> ## Preface:
> 
> I’ve often wondered about what life for a Slayer would be like in a non-European culture. Nearly all of the Tales of the Slayer stories have involved European Slayers. Some have even gone so far as to not have any Slayers called in the Americas until after the European colonization began, and have the first American Slayer be a girl of European descent. It seemed to me that the monsters and demons that the Slayer is supposed to be fighting wouldn’t be limited to the Eurasian continent, and Slayers would have been needed in America (and Africa, and Australia) long before any Europeans found it. 
> 
>  
> 
> I had also noticed that there are quite a few similarities between many of the North American wendigo legends, and vampire legends. Then I came across a version of the wendigo story that had the wendigo being defeated by a girl, using wooden sticks as her weapons. That she must have been a Slayer was obvious to me, and this story started to simmer in my mind.

Nahanni ran. She had been running since shortly before sunrise and had covered a couple of miles along the path that ran along the river bank. She came to a ravine where a small creek ran down over the rocks, and she turned away from the river to follow it. She ran up along the creek, climbing the ravine to the top of the cliff. She turned back, following the edge of the cliff overlooking the river until she came to the clearing. 

She stopped. She took a couple of deep breaths, and her heart pounding beneath her breast calmed. She stood on the cliff top with the river below her. The morning sun had risen a little way over the horizon to her right, and the frost was starting to melt under its warmth. The hills across the river to the north were covered with red and gold from the trees that were about to lose their leaves. The sky was the deep blue that only seemed to happen in the autumn. She could hear the roar of the waterfall just a little farther up the river, and see the mist from it around an outcrop of rock. 

Nahanni was amazed. She had never run this far, this quickly. It usually took her at least twice as long to reach this lookout point, and she would have been out of breath with her heart pounding for minutes after doing it. Today she felt like she could make the run again, just as quickly, carrying a heavy pack. 

That wasn’t the only change. Yesterday morning she had been helping gather firewood, stocking up for the coming winter. She had tried to shift a log that would have taken half a dozen men to lift, and it had come right off the ground in her hands. She had been so startled that she dropped it right away, before anyone noticed. That afternoon she had been wrestling with one of the boys. Kesuck was one of her favourite wrestling partners. He usually ‘won’ but this time she had bested him easily, and he had gone off in a huff, leaving her frustrated. 

Most disturbing were the dreams. They had started a week ago. In them she was fighting. Sometimes with people she knew, but their faces were horribly disfigured. Their foreheads were distorted, and their eyes were yellow. Their teeth were fangs that bit into the necks of their victims. Knives didn’t kill them in her dreams, but an arrow or a wooden stake through their hearts caused them to explode into dust. 

Nahanni sat on a rock, looking out over the river and thinking. She could hear a few birds moving through the trees behind her, though most had departed already for the winter. Travellers told that they went south, to lands where the snows didn’t come. Nahanni’s village saw a lot of travellers. Down the river led to a greater one, which led out to the sea: an endless expanse of water that they said was too salty to drink. Up the river led to rich trapping grounds, and somewhere far beyond them was a source of ochre. A smaller river led south, into a network of small lakes, and then to a great lake, so large they said you couldn’t see across it. Canoes could cross it though, carrying furs and ochre south, and other goods north. Nahanni’s hand went to the knife at her belt. Its blade had come from the south, when her father was young. It was her most prized possession, one of the few reminders she had of him. He had vanished on a hunting trip three winters ago. Her mind went back to her dreams. One of the faces she saw was his, just before her knife slashed through his neck. 

Nahanni shuddered, trying to pull her mind away from the dreams. She concentrated on the sounds around her. She could hear a deer moving almost silently through the trees behind her. She knew it hadn’t noticed her sitting there. She could also hear other animals that she knew she wouldn’t have a week earlier. A racoon was sheltering for the day in the hollow centre of a dead tree nearby, mice were moving through the grass. 

She sat and thought about her dreams, and the strange new strength and awareness that flowed through her body. She wondered what they could mean. She decided to talk with Grandmother. 


	2. Shamans

Nahanni’s grandmother was the village shaman. Many reckoned her to be the wisest shaman for many days travel in any direction. Even the shamans from the great village at the river mouth sometimes made the journey upstream to consult with her. Nahanni had lived in her lodge ever since the winter her father had vanished, and she loved the old woman. She was also afraid of her. _Everyone_ in the village loved and feared the old woman. Nahanni felt a great deal of trepidation approaching her. She sat down on the other side of the small fire burning in the fire pit in the floor of the lodge. 

“Grandmother, I’ve been having dreams.” 

The old woman smiled. “Everyone dreams, child.” 

“These aren’t like any dreams I’ve had before,” said Nahanni. “And there are other things. There’s something different about me. I’ve changed. I’ve grown stronger…stronger than anyone should be.” 

The old woman frowned. “Tell me about your dreams.” 

“I’m fighting,” said Nahanni. “I’m always fighting. I’m fighting men…but they aren’t men. Their faces are horrible, and they don’t die from wounds that would kill anyone else. They move faster than any man could move…but I move faster.” 

Nahanni’s grandmother hissed her breath through her remaining teeth. She turned away and reached into a bowl of herbs by her side and took a pinch between her fingers. She muttered something in a language that Nahanni couldn’t understand, and tossed the herbs into the fire. The fire flared and a small cloud of smoke rose toward the hole in the roof. The old woman watched it carefully. She seemed to see something that Nahanni could not. She did not look happy about it. 

“What do you see grandmother?” asked Nahanni. 

The old woman didn’t answer. She reached aside again and picked up a knife. Her hand moved faster than Nahanni thought someone so old could move, and the knife flew at Nahanni’s head. 

Nahanni’s hand moved faster. It flashed up and she caught the knife, its handle inches from her forehead. Only after she caught it did Nahanni realize that if she hadn’t, it would have been the handle of the knife that hit her. Anger and confusion warred inside her. “Grandmother! Why…?” 

“It’s true,” said the old woman. “Oh, child. I am so sorry.” 

“What, Grandmother? What is happening? Why did you throw this knife at me?” 

“The wendigo are coming,” said her grandmother. 

Nahanni shuddered. The wendigo were the most horrible of legends. Men transformed into evil creatures, who ate the flesh of other men. “Wendigo, Grandmother? But they’re just—” 

“They aren’t stories, child. They are real. They come at night, and they drink the blood of the living. The daylight kills them, and they fear the sun sign.” The old woman drew a cross on the floor. “Wounds do not kill them, unless their heads are taken, or wood pierces their hearts. Fire will destroy them. Other than that, they are ageless. They do not die.” 

“But what has this to do with _me?_ ” asked Nahanni. 

“When the wendigo come, there also comes a Protector,” said the old woman. “Always a girl…always young. She is given the strength to fight them, and the dreams to guide her.” 

Nahanni sat for a moment. “Grandmother, in my dreams, some of the wendigo…they look like people I know.” 

“Yes, child. The wendigo mostly kill, but they can make more of their kind, by mixing their blood with the blood of their victims.” The old woman could see that Nahanni was upset. “Who do you recognize, child?” 

“Mostly, they’re just people I feel I know.” said Nahanni. “I don’t remember after the dream ends…but one of them…one of them is Father.” 

“If the wendigo took him, he is not your father anymore,” said her grandmother. “He is a creature of evil. Do not let his face, or his words deceive you. He may try to trick you, pretend to be the man he once was, but he is no longer a man…no longer my son. He is dead, and when you see the wendigo that wears his face, you must show it no mercy.” 

“But I don’t know how to fight, Grandmother,” said Nahanni. “I mean…I wrestle with the boys, but that isn’t the sort of fighting that happens in my dreams.” 

“You must learn,” said the old woman. She sat and thought a moment. “Go fetch Ashiwut.” 

Ashiwut was the old woman’s apprentice. She had been teaching him the ways of the shaman since he had been a small boy. He was now a young man, and though no one thought as highly of him as they did of her grandmother, most of the village thought that she had chosen a worthy successor for herself. 

Nahanni found Ashiwut by the smoke house, chanting the incantations that would ensure that the fresh catch of fish being smoked would be preserved through the coming winter. She waited patiently for him to finish—you never interrupted a shaman when he was chanting—before telling him that her grandmother wished to speak with him. 

They returned to her grandmother’s lodge, and the old woman had Nahanni tell Ashiwut about her dreams and her new-found strength. She looked at her apprentice. “What does this mean to you?” 

Ashiwut took a pinch of the same herbs that her grandmother had used and tossed them into the fire. He watched the smoke rise, as her grandmother had done. Nahanni still didn’t see anything but smoke. She wondered if this was just a trick shamans used to give themselves a chance to think before they spoke. 

Ashiwut watched the smoke longer than her grandmother had. He didn’t speak again until it had all vanished through the vent hole in the lodge roof. “She is the Protector,” he said at last. 

Grandmother nodded. “Very good. I am too old to teach her much of what she must learn, and must learn quickly. You must teach her the skills of the warrior. I can teach her of the wendigo, and other demons, but you must teach her how to fight.” 

“Grandmother…” The old woman wasn’t really Ashiwut’s grandmother, but she was the true grandmother or great grandmother to much of the village, and very few ever called her anything else. “…I do not possess the skills of the warrior myself.” 

“You know more than you think, and what you do not know you will learn, to pass on to Nahanni. No one must know that she is the Protector. You must ask the other warriors to teach you what you do not yet know, so you can pass the knowledge on to Nahanni. 

“This will not be as difficult as you may think. The Protector is given the talents that she needs. Even before her calling Nahanni has learned the use of the bow.” The old woman smiled at her granddaughter. “She is already known as the best shot in the village, and I think she will find that she has greatly improved. I think we will need to get her a stronger bow too.” 


	3. Training

Ashiwut trained Nahanni to fight over the following weeks. At first they used her clearing overlooking the river as a place where they could meet and have their training sessions in private. They never left the village together. Ashiwut usually left first. Nahanni gave him plenty of a head start before she would head off too, so that he would have time to recover a little from the journey before she arrived. 

The leaves fell from the trees, and the first snows of the season came and went. It was a warm autumn. The little bit of snow that fell didn’t linger long on the ground, but it made Ashiwut and Nahanni more careful about hiding their meetings. It was impossible to hide their tracks in the snow, so Nahanni started taking a longer route to their training ground, first following the little river south for a mile or so before circling around and coming back to the clifftop clearing. 

It was a small village though, and soon the rumours were flying. People were noticing that Nahanni and Ashiwut were often both missing at the same time, and when they were in the village, they were often together. The village boys had all noticed how Nahanni was no longer wrestling with them. Grandmother had a simple solution for that problem, and Nahanni packed up her possessions and moved into Ashiwut’s lodge. 

In addition to her daily sessions with Ashiwut, Nahanni took up a nightly patrol through the woods around the village. She had always been able to move quickly and silently through the trees, but now she could do it at night, at a full run, as silently as a shadow through the darkness. The night wasn’t dark to her anymore. She could see almost as well under a full moon as she could see in the daylight, and even on moonless and cloudy nights she could see better than she had with a full moon before her calling. 

Each morning after her patrols she reported what she had seen to Grandmother. She mostly reported seeing nothing, except for one night when she had come upon the remains of a dead rabbit. Finding a dead animal wasn’t unusual, but this one hadn’t been killed by any normal predator, or fallen from some disease. Whatever had killed it hadn’t been interested in eating its flesh. All of the blood had been drained from it. 

“They’re coming,” said Grandmother. “They’ve sent a scout ahead.” 

Nahanni spent the next nights searching for any sign of the scout, to kill it before it could report back to its master, but she found nothing. 

* * *

One of the final canoes of the season came up the river carrying a package for Grandmother. The old shaman called Nahanni back into her lodge. She placed the long, narrow, leather wrapped bundle into Nahanni’s hands. “This is for you, child.” 

“Thank you, Grandmother.” Nahanni opened the package, which she now recognized as a sheath for a bow, and removed the bow that was inside. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be anything special about it. It was a slender bow, one that wouldn’t look out of place in the hands of a strong girl, but Nahanni felt that there was something different about it. Close examination showed that the workmanship of the bowmaker who had crafted it was exquisite. Faint symbols were etched into the wood, and Nahanni could feel the magic in them. She stood and strung the bow. She was surprised by how much strength it took for her do that. She never would have been able to, in the days before she had been called to be the Protector. She held the bow up, and pulled back on the string, feeling the force required to draw it. She knew that none of the village warriors would be able to fully draw that bow. She eased off on the string, and unstrung the bow. She sat back down and pulled the other item from the sheath: a quiver full of arrows, each one as exquisitely crafted as the bow itself. 

“Oh, thank you Grandmother!” said Nahanni again. “This is a truly wonderful gift!” 

“It was crafted for a Protector, many years ago, and kept safe against the day when a new Protector might be sent to us,” said the old shaman. “You are its new guardian. Keep it safe, and use it well.” 


	4. The Wendigo Come

The first blizzard of the winter came shortly after the solstice. The wind howled through the village for two days, keeping everyone inside the great longhouse who didn’t have to go outside. Even those who had their own lodges moved into the longhouse where they shared the warmth of their bodies and cooking fires. They passed the time listening to the old ones tell stories. When Grandmother’s turn came, she told the tales of the wendigo. 

The third day after the start of the blizzard dawned bright, and clear, and cold. The villagers ventured forth from the longhouse and started the work of clearing paths through the snow between the lodges and storehouses of the village. Some of the drifts of snow were deeper than the tallest of the men. 

The snow was too deep for Nahanni to move quickly through it when she resumed her patrols. Now she had to wear snowshoes to keep from sinking waist deep into the drifts between the trees. She still found no sign of anything stalking her village. 

There had been a hunting party away when the blizzard struck. They had been due back at about the time that it ended, but no one was concerned when they still hadn’t returned a week later. They would have had to take shelter during the storm, and they wouldn’t be able to move as quickly through the deep snow when the weather cleared. The delay in their return was at first seen as a hopeful sign. They were held up by the difficulty of transporting all the game they had killed. 

Nahanni knew better. Her nightly dreams were full of the faces of some of the men from the hunting party, transformed into wendigo. 

Two weeks after the blizzard, other people were starting to worry too. The hunters should have been back by now, no matter how much the snow or their burdens had delayed them. 

It was just after sunset, on the fifteenth day after the blizzard when Mandokee returned to the village. He stood outside the great longhouse, slapping his hand against the wall by the door, calling out to his brother and sister. “Pamaswek! Sebequa! Can I come in?” 

The noise Mandokee was making roused the entire village. People boiled from their lodges, including Pamaswek and Sebequa who hugged their brother, glad that he had returned alive. 

“Where are the others?” asked Moguago, the village chief. “Where is the hunting party?” 

“They are camped not far from here,” said Mandokee. “I came ahead to ask for help to bring in the game we have killed.” He pointed toward the lodge. “Please, may I come in to warm myself by the fire?” 

Nahanni watched the man whose face had appeared in many of her dreams over the past weeks. “He is not Mandokee,” she whispered to Ashiwut. “He is a wendigo.” 

Ashiwut started to open his mouth to say something, but Pamaswek spoke first. “Of course brother! Come in! Warm yourself. Then in the morning you can lead some of us back to your camp to fetch the others, and help bring in your catch.” 

Mandokee smiled. “Thank you for your invitation, brother.” He ducked through the doorway into the longhouse. Everyone followed, anxious to hear his news. Nahanni stayed close to him, alert for any sign that the wendigo would attack, but it quickly became apparent that that was not its plan. 

Mandokee told a story of a very successful hunt, and a hunting party exhausted by the effort to move so much meat through the deep snow. “I do not want to leave them out there overnight, when there is a warm lodge and fire waiting here for them,” he told the people gathered around the fire. “We just need five or six strong men to come with me now, and we can have all the meat brought to the smokehouse, and everyone in a warm bed by midnight.” 

Nahanni and Ashiwut exchanged a glance. It was plain to both of them what Mandokee’s plan was. Lure some of the best warriors in the village into a trap and kill them, perhaps make some or all of them wendigo too. Weaken the village, while making themselves stronger. Ashiwut stood up. “Yes! I will come with you.” The other men around the fire quickly volunteered too. 

“No, no!” said Mandokee. “We do not need so many. Five or six will do.” He picked out Ashiwut, and five of the strongest warriors, including his brother Pamaswek. “You will come with me.” 

Ashiwut returned to his lodge with Nahanni to get his snowshoes and parka for the journey. The men going with Mandokee would all meet at the stockade gate when they were ready. 

“Are you crazy?” asked Nahanni as Ashiwut gathered his things. “You know this is a trap!” 

“Of course it’s a trap.” Ashiwut slid a wooden stake into each of his parka sleeves. “But we see the trap. I will go with Mandokee and the others. You will follow us. When the wendigo attack, we will kill them.” 

Nahanni waited until after Ashiwut had gone to meet the other men before she left their lodge and made her way to the stockade wall. She climbed it easily, with her snowshoes and bow slung over her back, and jumped down into the deep snow on the other side. She put on her snowshoes and moved quickly around the wall toward the main gate. The men were already gone when she arrived there, but their tracks were plain in the moonlight. She set out after them. 

* * *

Mandokee led the group of six men south along the banks of the small river. They could see that he was following a single set of snowshoe tracks going the other way toward the village, the tracks he had made himself as he came in. 

Nahanni caught up with the men quickly. She broke away from the trail, climbing up into the trees at the top of the river bank before anyone could see her. She knew that none of the men from the village would see her, but Grandmother had told her that wendigo could see as well in the dark as she did. Her nightly patrols had made her familiar with all the terrain around the village, and she knew she could move as swiftly through the trees as the men were moving on the trail along the river’s edge. She was close enough now that she didn’t have to see the men or their tracks to follow them—they were moving too quickly to be travelling without making any noise—she could hear the faint crunching of the snow under their snowshoes. She also knew that they had little choice in their path. The river still wasn’t frozen enough that she had to worry that they might turn away from her and cross it. Large sections of the fast flowing river were still free of ice. They either continued upstream, or they turned away from the river, toward her. 

* * *

Ashiwut wondered how far Mandokee would lead them before the wendigo sprang their trap. He didn’t think it would be very far. Just far enough that there would be no hope of anyone in their village hearing their screams. He figured they had passed that point some time ago and his eyes darted around, looking for the ambush that he knew was coming. 

Mandokee led them into a place where the trail along the river’s edge narrowed. A steep bank rose above them to their right, and the river ran deep and black and cold to their left. ‘This is it,’ Ashiwut thought to himself. He wasn’t wrong. 

Mandokee stopped, and turned around, blocking the path so that none of them could move forward. Ashiwut saw that he had dropped his disguise. Mandokee’s eyes shone yellow in the night, his forehead was creased with ridges, and fangs appeared in his mouth. 

Ashiwut looked back. He saw another wendigo appear out of the darkness on the trail behind them, cutting off their escape. He looked up the river bank, just in time to see more wendigo erupt from the snow that had covered them, to fall down onto the men on the trail. 


	5. The River

The four wendigo from above them fell on the men behind Ashiwut. Their inhuman snarls where mixed with the cries of surprise and fear coming from their intended victims. Ashiwut dropped his mittens into the snow and reached into his sleeve for one of the stakes he had brought. Mandokee was on him before he could get it out. They fell together into the snow. 

There was no skill in Mandokee’s attack. He was like a wild animal: ripping at Ashiwut with his hands and fangs. The only thing that saved Ashiwut from having his throat ripped out was his heavy parka. Mandokee’s fangs weren’t long enough to penetrate its hood, and Ashiwut’s neck as well. 

Ashiwut gave up on trying to get his stake clear. He concentrated on just keeping Mandokee’s fangs away from his neck. They rolled together in the snow, their tangled snowshoe bindings making it impossible for either of them to regain their feet. Ashiwut was aware that the others were all engaged in a similar desperate struggle all around him. He wondered where Nahanni was. He heard a high pitched shriek, unlike anything he had ever heard before. 

* * *

Nahanni knelt on the river bank overlooking the struggling men and wendigo. She wanted to rush forward, to attack them directly, but all of Grandmother’s and Ashiwut’s training had emphasized that she must remain hidden, if at all possible. No one from the village could see her, so she nocked another arrow, and took careful aim, looking for a clear shot into the heart of another wendigo. Grandmother had told her that the wendigo would vanish into dust when their hearts were pierced, but she had still been surprised by the way the first one had exploded, clothes and all, and no one had told her about the shriek it made when it died. She loosed her arrow, and a second wendigo exploded into dust. 

* * *

Ashiwut saw the second wendigo die, and now he knew what that first shriek had been. Nahanni was out there somewhere, staying hidden as she had been taught. She had killed two of the wendigo. The men who had been fighting with the wendigo that Nahanni had slain leapt onto the backs of other wendigo, that were still attacking their comrades. 

Mandokee stopped trying to get at Ashiwut’s throat, and tried to pull away to look for whatever was killing the other wendigo. The sudden shift of his body saved him. Ashiwut saw one of Nahanni’s arrow heads suddenly protruding from Mandokee’s chest, but this arrow had missed his heart. 

Mandokee still howled in pain, and tried to pull away. Ashiwut held on and they rolled together in the snow. Ashiwut felt himself falling, and then a sudden shock of icy coldness hit his whole body. He wanted to gasp for air, but his face was submerged in the black, fast flowing water. 

* * *

Nahanni saw Ashiwut and the wendigo he was fighting go into the river, but she was too far away to do anything for him, and there were still three wendigo attacking the men on the riverbank. She took aim at the only one she could get a clear shot at, and waited. She didn’t want to miss again. She waited until it looked like the wendigo was finally in a position where it was able to make its kill. The man under it had stopped struggling, and the wendigo’s entire concentration was on his throat. It bent down toward him. She loosed her arrow, and the wendigo exploded into dust. 

The two wendigo remaining broke away from the men they had intended to kill. They knew there was something in the darkness that was hunting them. Something they couldn’t see. They ran away up the trail. Nahanni shot another arrow, and there was only one wendigo left. It vanished around the bend in the river before she could kill it too. 

The five men on the riverbank looked around in confusion. “What happened?” they asked each other. “What were those things?” “Who saved us?” 

“Where are Mandokee, and Ashiwut?” asked Pamaswek. 

“They went into the river,” said Tokopaw. “Mandokee…Mandokee was with the things that attacked us.” 

“No!” said Pamaswek. “He is my brother! He would never ally himself with such creatures!” He turned to the river. “ _Mandokee! Mandokee! Where are you? Ashiwut!_ ” 

Nahanni was scanning the river too, looking for any sign of Ashiwut or the wendigo. She could only see the black, roiling water. She rose to her feet and started to run downstream. 

* * *

Ashiwut struggled in the icy water. The river was shallow here, shallow enough that he could push his face above the surface to gasp for air, but the current was too strong to allow him to stand. Every time he tried he was knocked off his feet again. The cold, and his struggles were quickly sapping him of strength. The only good thing about his situation was that he had become separated from Mandokee. The wendigo was somewhere else in the icy darkness. 

The current slowed as the river deepened. Ashiwut tried to swim toward shore, but his heavy clothes and the snowshoe still bound to one of his boots made it nearly impossible. He saw a line of white approaching from his right and swam harder. If he got dragged under the ice, he was dead. 

The current brought him to the ice before he reached the shore. He tried to grab the edge but the thin ice crumbled. He tried again, and this time the ice held for a moment, but it broke away again when he tried to pull himself up. He could feel the current inexorably pulling at him, trying to drag him under the ice, and tried again. This time the ice held longer. He had half dragged himself up onto it before it broke again. 

Ashiwut tried to grab for the edge of ice again, but his strength was nearly gone. He felt it slipping from his grasp, and the current pulling him under. 

Something grabbed at his collar. ‘The wendigo has found me!’ thought Ashiwut. He tried to struggle, but he had no strength left. He felt himself being hauled up out of the water. He heard the ice groan and crack under him, but it held. He felt himself get pulled a few inches across it and looked up. He saw Nahanni. 

Nahanni saw Ashiwut’s eyes open, and look at her as she pulled him back along the ice. She kept herself down flat on it, spreading her weight as much as possible as she pulled him a few more inches from the broken edge. She backed away, and pulled him again. Ashiwut started to move, helping her pull him across the ice, and they started to make better progress. She pulled him up onto the shore at about the same time they heard the other men coming down the trail. 

“Go!” whispered Ashiwut. “They mustn’t see you! They can help me get back to the village from here.” He could see Nahanni hesitating. “ _Go!_ ” 

Nahanni pulled Ashiwut to her for a quick kiss, and then vanished into the darkness. 

Ashiwut crawled up to the trail, along the path Nahanni had made, to obscure her tracks. He knew that there was no hope of hiding that someone had helped him out of the river, but he hoped he could obscure the traces enough that even skilled trackers wouldn’t be able to identify who had left them. 

The returning men saw Ashiwut lying on the trail, and ran toward him. “Ashiwut! Are you okay?” asked Pamaswek. “Where is Mandokee? Did he pull you from the river?” 

“Mandokee is dead,” said Ashiwut. He was shivering uncontrollably. “He has been dead for some time. It was a wendigo that came to our village this evening.” 

“No!” said Pamaswek. “It was Mandokee! I know my own brother!” 

Ashiwut showed Pamaswek the tears in his parka, at the base of its hood. “Would your brother do this?” He pointed to the similar tears in Pamaswek’s parka. “You saw the creature that did that. Mandokee has become a wendigo. No doubt the rest of the hunting party as well. They are all dead. If you see any of them again, they will try to kill you.” 

“Who pulled you from the river?” asked Tokopaw. 

“I don’t know,” said Ashiwut. “It was a stranger. I’d never seen him before.” 

Tokopaw held up a couple of arrows, Ashiwut recognized them as Nahanni’s. “It must have been the same man who shot these.” Tokopaw turned them around in his hands. “I don’t recognize them.” 

Ashiwut took one of the arrows in a trembling hand and pretended to look at it more closely. “There is magic in them.” He handed it back to Tokopaw. “Give them to Grandmother when we get back to the village.” He was suddenly racked by a wave of more uncontrollable shivering. 

“Come,” said Tokopaw. “We must get you back to the village before you freeze.” He smiled at Ashiwut. “Let Nahanni warm you up.” He helped pull Ashiwut to his feet. 

“What became of the wendigo?” asked Ashiwut as they moved down the trail. 

“Our mysterious saviour killed four of them,” said Tokopaw. “One got away.” He looked toward the river. “Perhaps Mandokee drowned.” 

“No,” said Ashiwut. “Wendigo cannot drown, but with luck, it may be trapped under the ice. We must hurry. Warn the village about what has happened.” 

* * *

Nahanni watched from the trees as the men disappeared down the trail, then she started to move herself, as fast as she dared without making too much noise. She had to be back to the village ahead of them. She moved quietly through the trees. 

Nahanni slowed. She felt something watching her from the darkness. She felt its evil, as she had felt Mandokee’s evil in the village. She slowed her pace and looked around. 

A shadow separated from a tree up ahead of her. The shape of a man appeared in front of her. Nahanni stopped and reached for a stake. 

“Hello Nahanni,” said the wendigo with her father’s face. 


	6. Father

Nahanni held her stake clutched tightly in her hand. “Fa— _No!_ You are not my father!” 

The wendigo smiled at her. “Of course I’m your father, Little Bird.” He used the name that he had called her when she was a child. “You can see it is me.” 

“No!” said Nahanni. “My father is dead. You are a demon wearing his face. You are the creature that killed him!” 

“What nonsense!” said the wendigo. “Your grandmother has been filling your head with her tales, hasn’t she? I am more alive now than I ever was when I had a heartbeat. Am I not stronger than I ever was? A heartbeat is a small price to pay for such strength. Of what use is a heartbeat? You can join me. We can live forever, together.” 

“Never!” said Nahanni. “Become a creature that lives off the blood of others? Something that will kill my friends? I will die first!” 

“True,” said the wendigo. “First you must die!” It lunged forward at Nahanni. 

Nahanni hesitated for a moment, unable to bring herself to strike at her father, but she saw his face change as he closed on her. His eyes turned yellow, and his mouth opened, showing his fangs. She started to bring her stake up. Her hesitation cost her, though. The wendigo was on her before she could get her stake into position and it knocked her over onto her back. She struggled as the wendigo’s hands ripped at her hood, trying to pull it open so it could get at her throat with its fangs. 

She got her hand with her stake clear, and struck against the side of the wendigo, but her awkward position gave her no leverage and the thick leather of its parka was too tough to penetrate. She shifted her arms to break its grip on her collar, and punched it in the face. 

The wendigo was rocked back, enough that Nahanni was able to shift its weight and roll it off her. She rolled with it, until she was on top, and punched it in the face again. She pulled back, and struck at its chest with her stake, using all of her strength. 

The wendigo was saved by its parka again. The thick leather was strong enough to deflect the point of her stake. It still penetrated into the wendigo’s chest but the stake missed its heart. The change in angle made it break in Nahanni’s hand, leaving several inches stuck in the wendigo’s chest. 

The wendigo howled in pain and threw Nahanni off. She rolled to her knees in the snow and drew her knife, ready for its next attack. The wendigo was gone. Nahanni looked around, and listened. She could see nothing, and only heard the faint whisper of the wind through the bare branches of the trees. Then she heard something else, another whisper in the wind. “I’ll see you again soon, Little Bird.” 

Nahanni gathered up her dropped bow, and the arrows that had been spilled from her quiver. She looked around for the tracks of the wendigo, but they vanished once they left the area of their fight. She couldn’t spend much time looking. She still had to get back to the village before Ashiwut and the others. 

* * *

She almost didn’t make it. Nahanni was climbing over the back fence of the stockade when the village was roused by the shouting of the men arriving at the front gate. The commotion of their arrival created enough confusion for her to slip to the lodge she shared with Ashiwut, and toss her snowshoes and bow inside. She also left her parka, with its telltale water soaked sleeve. It had frozen stiff during her journey back to the village. 

Everyone was talking and shouting at once when Nahanni reached the crowd gathered at the gate. Everyone had a different version of the story about how they had been attacked by the wendigo, and their descriptions of the creatures that had attacked them varied greatly as well. Nahanni couldn’t help but smile as she heard how the wendigo had grown, both in size, and in numbers. The way the men told it, they had been attacked by a dozen ten foot tall monsters. They also told how they had been rescued by some unseen spirit. 

Ashiwut was shivering too much to give his own version of what had happened. Nahanni made her way through the crowd, and put her arm around him, hoping that anyone who noticed that her jacket sleeve was wet would assume that it got that way from its contact with Ashiwut. “Come,” she told him. “We must get you warm.” She helped him through the crowd toward their lodge. She asked one of the village girls to bring him a bowl of hot stew from the pot kept warm in the longhouse. 

Once inside their lodge Nahanni stripped the wet clothes off Ashiwut. She wrapped him in a fur blanket, sat him on their bed and went to get the banked fire in the pit burning again, to quickly raise the temperature in the lodge. She was hanging his wet clothes near the fire to dry when Rezekash arrived with a bowl of warm stew. 

Ashiwut was still shivering too much to easily feed himself. Nahanni knew that this was a good sign: he wasn’t in real danger unless he got so cold that he stopped shivering. The warm food and warm bed would help him recover quickly. She helped him eat the stew, and then slipped him into their bed. She finished hanging his wet clothes by the fire, adding her own parka and jacket, stripped out of her own clothes, and slipped into bed beside him. She wrapped herself around him to warm his body with her own. 

Nahanni lay with Ashiwut until his shivering stopped, his skin started to feel warm against hers, and he fell asleep. She got carefully out of their bed, so as not to disturb him, and got dressed. After tending to the fire to make sure it would stay burning slowly, she left their lodge to go speak with Grandmother. 

Nahanni told her grandmother about the fight by the river, and that four of the wendigo were dead. The old woman was not pleased that Mandokee was one of the survivors. “He has been invited into the longhouse. He can enter it now at any time.” 

“Perhaps he will stay trapped in the ice,” said Nahanni. 

“That is not likely, child,” said Grandmother. “The ice is still thin, and much of the river is open. Mandokee probably left the river before you pulled Ashiwut out.” 

“There is more bad news Grandmother,” said Nahanni. “On the way back from the river, I met another wendigo. We fought, but it escaped before I could kill it. It…it was Father.” 

“Oh, child, I am so sorry,” said Grandmother, “but you must not let your feelings for him cloud your judgement. Your father is long dead.” 

“I know,” said Nahanni. “I…I hesitated at first, that may be why it still lives, but I have seen its true face now. I will not hesitate again.” 

“Do not err the other way either, child,” said Grandmother. “Do not let it goad you into a foolish attack.” She smiled at Nahanni. “Now go back to your lodge. Keep Ashiwut warm.” 

Nahanni did not go straight back to her lodge. She took a quick patrol around the inside of the stockade fence. What she saw both pleased and worried her. Moguago had set sentries all around the perimeter. It would make it difficult for any wendigo to sneak into their village. It would also make it difficult for her to sneak out. No one would venture outside the stockade tonight, but in the morning they would be checking the outside perimeter too, and it was likely that someone would find the tracks she had made in the snow. She hoped for more snow to fall, but a glance up at the myriad of stars in the sky told her that wasn’t likely. She was still pondering the problem when she slipped back into bed with Ashiwut. 


	7. The Day After

Nahanni could hear the wind whistling outside her lodge when she awoke the next morning. She smiled to herself. Blowing snow would mask her tracks as well as fresh fallen snow. She got out of their bed, dressed, and started to prepare the morning meal for her and Ashiwut. The parts of his clothing facing away from the fire were still damp so she rearranged how they were hanging. He was awake and sitting up in their bed by the time she was finished. She told him about her encounter with the wendigo on her way back to the village, while they ate. 

Rezekash came to tell them that Moguago had called for a gathering of the entire village in the great longhouse. Ashiwut got dressed in his damp clothing—his body heat would have to finish the job of drying them—and he and Nahanni joined the rest of the village. 

Nearly everyone was already gathered and talking in hushed tones, retelling one another the tales they had heard of the wendigo. The tale of the attack by the river had grown even more overnight. Ashiwut found himself surrounded by people who wanted to hear about what happened to him in the river. He found that people were less interested in the story of his struggle against drowning, than the one they had made up about him fighting the wendigo. 

Moguago entered with Tokopaw following close behind. They were talking quietly with each other. Moguago looked around, and beckoned for Rezekash to come over to him. He spoke quietly to the girl, and she quickly left the longhouse. She came back a few minutes later with Grandmother. A hush fell over the people of the village as she entered. The old woman leaned against Rezekash as the girl helped her move to her place by the fire. 

Moguago took his place beside Grandmother and called the gathering to order. Everyone took their positions around the central fire pit. “Great evil has come upon us,” said Moguago. “The wendigo have returned to our lands. Not even the eldest among us remember the last time this happened. Grandmother tells me that her grandfather spoke of the wendigo attacking during his youth. 

“But know this: the wendigo have come to these lands before and they were driven away. We will drive them away again. The wendigo are strong, but they are not invincible. Six wendigo attacked six men of our village. Our men all survived, and four wendigo are dead. We can defeat them.” 

There were smiles and nods all around the fire. They were interrupted by Pamaswek. “But _we_ didn’t defeat the wendigo. We were rescued by some invisible spirit.” 

“A spirit skilled with a bow,” said Ashiwut. “We have many hunters who are also skilled. This spirit was also quite visible, and substantial when it pulled me from the river.” 

“And you are sure you did not recognize anything about this man?” asked Moguago. 

“It was no man I had ever seen before,” said Ashiwut. He felt rather pleased with the way he answered the question without lying. 

“There has been much nonsense spoken about the wendigo overnight,” said Moguago. “It is time to hear the truth. Grandmother has told us the stories in the past. Today I want you to listen to them again.” 

Moguago sat down, and Grandmother took over. She told the old stories that everyone knew, and she told some of the stories that the shamans usually only told to each other. She told of the ways to kill a wendigo: wood through the heart, beheading, fire, and sunlight. She told of the wendigo’s ability to appear to be a friend or loved one. She told that the wendigo could only enter a dwelling if invited by someone who lived there. “Mandokee tricked an invitation into this longhouse from his brother, and he still lives, so he can enter, but no other wendigo can enter any of our other dwellings.” 

“So we are safe during the day?” asked Kishegaequa, the wife of Moguago. 

“Not entirely,” said Ashiwut. “Winter furs and leggings will protect the wendigo from the worst effects of the sun, but they will be reluctant to venture from their hiding places in daylight. In the day we have many of the advantages they have in the night. We can see, and move freely in the daylight. Wendigo will try to stick to the shadows.” 

“They can’t enter our homes, but can they burn us out?” asked one of the men. “Set fire to our lodges at night, and kill us when we come running out?” 

“That is possible, and we must guard against it,” said Ashiwut, “Moguago set sentries last night, and we must keep watch until the threat has passed, but the wendigo are themselves more vulnerable to fire than we are. They fear it almost as much as the sun. A man whose clothes have been set on fire can save himself by rolling in the snow. A wendigo will be consumed by the flames almost instantly.” 

“We will double the sentries tonight,” said Moguago. This produced groans from several of the men who had had their sleep curtailed the night before. “In spite of the guard we had posted, someone, or something, entered the village last night. We never would have known if Tokopaw hadn’t found their tracks in the snow.” 

This caused a sudden babble of worried talk around the fire. Everyone was afraid of what their night-time intruder may have wanted. Nahanni stayed quiet and kept the smile off her face. The blowing snow must have obscured her tracks enough so that even a skilled tracker like Tokopaw had been unable to tell that the tracks were of someone leaving the village and then coming back, and he had assumed that it was the other way around. She was worried by Moguago’s planned guards though. She thought she might have been able to slip past the ones he had posted last night, but with them doubled, getting out and in again, undetected, seemed hopeless. She wondered why Ashiwut seemed unconcerned. 

Moguago called an end to the meeting. There was still the daily work that needed to get done in the village. People started to disperse. Rezekash went to Grandmother to assist her, but the old woman waved her away and called for Nahanni to come help her. She also asked for Moguago and Ashiwut to accompany them back to her lodge. 

They all sat around Grandmother’s fire. “There are some things that you need to know Moguago, that it is best not to tell the entire village,” said the old woman. “Foremost among them is that it was Nahanni who killed the wendigo last night, and pulled Ashiwut from the river.” 

To say that Moguago was surprised would have been an understatement. “But you said that you didn’t recognize who pulled you from the river,” he accused Ashiwut. 

“No, I said it was no _man_ that I recognized,” said Ashiwut. 

“But Nahanni is just a girl!” 

“Nahanni is the Protector,” said Grandmother. “She has been Chosen to protect us from the wendigo.” 

“How long have you known this?” asked Moguago. 

“Since before the first snow,” said Grandmother. 

“And you waited until now to tell me?” 

“The Protector’s identity must remain a secret,” said Grandmother. “If not for one event last night, I still would not tell you, but circumstances have changed.” 

“Now that the wendigo are here?” asked Moguago. “I should have been warned. _We_ should have been warned!” 

“And you were warned,” said Grandmother. “I have told the stories of the wendigo more times to more people in the last couple of moons than I think I’d told them in my entire life before this.” 

“So what has changed?” asked Moguago. 

“Last night, when she was coming back to the village, Nahanni met another wendigo, and this one recognized her, both as Nahanni, and as the Protector, and it escaped. The main reason to keep the Protector’s name a secret is to keep that knowledge from the wendigo, but now they know. It would still be best to keep this knowledge from most of the village. 

“It was Nahanni’s tracks that Tokopaw found in the snow, and if it makes you feel better, she made them before you posted your guards. No one was lax last night.” 

“I think I could have gotten past them anyway,” said Nahanni. 

Grandmother shot Nahanni a quelling look. “Now it will be necessary for a few people to be told of Nahanni,” she said. “Not many, just enough that there will be guards on duty who will know to let her pass when she leaves and enters the village at night.” 

“How are the guards to know that the wendigo have not made her one of their own, if she returns after a long absence?” asked Moguago. 

“A wendigo casts no reflection,” said Grandmother. “A bowl of water or…” She turned and rummaged through her shaman’s tools. “…this.” She pulled out a mirror made from a sheet of mica. “Give this to the guard on duty at the gate. If they can see someone’s reflection in it, they are not a wendigo.” 

They discussed who should be told. Grandmother wanted to keep the number down to an absolute minimum, only one or two. Moguago wanted at least half a dozen. They settled on the names of four men. 

* * *

Nahanni and Ashiwut returned to their lodge to collect their snowshoes and parkas. Nahanni wanted to go back to where she had met her father and examine the area in daylight, find some sign of where he had gone. Grandmother said that it was very rare for a wendigo to have the power to fly, or to travel by other magical means. Only a few of the most powerful, in the most ancient tales, could do such things and her son Makee had never shown any aptitude for magic in life. It was unlikely that he’d had the time to learn such powerful magic since his death. Nahanni hoped that the area of the woods where she had fought him was sufficiently sheltered from the winds for the tracks he must have made to have survived. 

* * *

Nahanni and Ashiwut approached the small clearing in the trees carefully, following the trail Nahanni had left when she had returned to the village, so they wouldn’t destroy any traces of the wendigo’s tracks with their own. The traces of the fight were still clear in the snow: a jumble of footprints, and depressions where Nahanni and the wendigo had rolled together in the snow. 

Nahanni had tried to follow the tracks the wendigo made when it left last night, and they had vanished. She took another look in the daylight. The tracks still led a little way into the woods, and ended. She knew that the wendigo couldn’t have stayed on the ground without leaving any sign, so she looked up. There was a branch of a tree not too far overhead. It was out of her reach, without jumping, but the taller wendigo could have reached it easily. She released the bindings of her snowshoes and went around to the other side of the tree so she could climb it without disturbing any sign the wendigo may have left on the branch. 

Once she was in the tree, Nahanni could clearly see that she was not the first person to have been up there since the last snowfall. The snow on the top of the branch had been disturbed by someone who had climbed up onto it. She saw signs of someone climbing through the tree on several other branches. They had moved up the tree to a place where it was possible to cross into the branches of another tree. Nahanni followed the trail. 

She could see where the wendigo had jumped back down to the ground, into a hollow that would conceal its tracks from the clearing. She went back to collect her snowshoes. 

Ashiwut was nowhere to be seen. Nahanni could see his tracks disappear around the tree that the wendigo had first appeared by. She knew that he was trying to backtrack the path it had taken to get to the clearing. She put her snowshoes back on and went to follow the tracks she had found in the hollow. 

The wendigo’s tracks lead her in a circle around the clearing. Moving through such deep snow couldn’t have been easy, even for something with the wendigo’s strength, so Nahanni suspected that it was circling around to where it had left its snowshoes when it had first arrived there. She wasn’t wrong. 

Ashiwut was waiting for her. His backtracking had brought him to the same place. The wendigo had left its snowshoes there before moving on into the clearing. They could see the trail it had made, both coming and going, leading back toward the river. They followed it to the trail along the riverbank, where it was lost amid the tracks of several people who had used it before and since. 

Nahanni and Ashiwut followed the trail up the riverbank as far as the narrow place where the wendigo had attacked last night. They paused there to examine the tracks made by the wendigo. It was plain that they had come to this place along the same trail from farther up the river. They found another of Nahanni’s arrows while they searched for more sign. 

They weren’t the first people from the village to be there that day. Moguago had taken a small band of hunters, and they had been there too. They had continued up the trail following the tracks of the wendigo themselves. 

Nahanni decided to leave that trail to Moguago. She and Ashiwut went back to examining the riverbank, looking for the place where Mandokee would have come out. They searched down one side of the river, and up the other without finding any sign of him. 

The afternoon shadows were lengthening. Dark came early this time of the year. Nahanni and Ashiwut returned to the village. They arrived at the same time as Moguago and his band of hunters. They were hauling a couple of toboggans, loaded with dressed venison and deer skins. 

“Mandokee wasn’t lying when he said that they’d had a good hunt,” said Tokopaw. “We found this not too far upstream from where we were attacked last night. The wendigo just left it there.” 

Ashiwut smiled sourly. “They don’t want us to starve. Our blood is sweeter if we’re well fed.” He joined the men hauling the lead toboggan. “Let’s get this to the smokehouse. It will be night soon.” 


	8. Night Attack

Nahanni stayed in the village that night. She patrolled around the inside of the stockade fence, stopping to talk with the sentries that Moguago had posted, getting them used to the idea of seeing her up and about late at night. She joked with them about being too frightened to sleep, before she would return to her lodge to catch a few hours rest, and then go back out and repeat the process with the next watch. 

The entire village was roused before sunrise. There was much that Moguago wanted to do that day. A small hunting party left as the sun was peeking over the horizon, to give them the most daylight in which to hunt, and still return to the village before nightfall. 

The village had been built on a rise in a triangular space of land between the confluence of the two rivers, with water on two sides, and forest on the third. The ice of the rivers was frozen here, and it would be easy for anything to cross it, but not without being seen by the lookouts in the village. If anything wanted to approach the village by stealth, it would come through the forest. There were several places where the trees grew almost to the stockade, leaving only a narrow space of open ground that a man, or a wendigo, could run across in seconds. Men were put to work clearing the trees that came close to the stockade. Children were put to work cutting back any low brush that would give cover to any wendigo attempting to sneak up on the village. 

* * *

In the late afternoon Nahanni and Ashiwut accompanied Moguago and four other men deep into the forest. Moguago had each man swear to keep what he was about to be told secret, and then they were told about Nahanni being the Protector. At first they were incredulous, not believing that a girl could be as strong or as skilled as they were told that Nahanni was. 

“Nahanni is skilled with a bow,” said Tokopaw, “But she could not be the one who saved us from the wendigo.” 

Nahanni strung her bow. “Pick a target.” 

“What?” 

“Pick a target,” said Nahanni. “I will show you how skilled I am.” 

Tokopaw shrugged. “Very well.” He looked around, and selected a tree, about fifty yards away. “That tree.” 

Nahanni smiled. “You should have picked something harder.” She shot off four arrows in as many heartbeats. Each arrow thwacked into the trunk of the tree, forming a horizontal line across it with no more than a finger’s breadth between each arrow. Nahanni smiled and handed her bow and an arrow to Tokopaw. “Now you try it.” 

Tokopaw was too stunned to do anything but take the bow. He nocked the arrow, and tried to draw the bow. It took all of his strength to only draw it half way. When he released the arrow, it missed the tree, and vanished into the forest. 

The other men all tried the bow, with similar results. Nahanni was glad that she hadn’t given them any of her special arrows, she might not be able to find them again. 

When they were done with the bow, Nahanni invited each of the men to wrestle with her—not as a man would wrestle with a woman, but as men wrestled with each other. She bested each of them easily. 

Moguago told the men that they would be acting as the sentries on the gate from now on, and that they were to allow Nahanni to exit and enter the village at any time, without telling anyone else about it. 

* * *

Nahanni left her lodge as the sun was setting. She moved quietly through the village, trying not to draw attention to herself. There was a lot of activity around the gate. The hunting party had just returned, and they’d had a successful hunt. Nahanni passed out through the gate unnoticed before it was closed for the night. It was normally left open, but nothing was normal any more. Instead of everyone getting a good night’s sleep, each of the men of the village would have to stand a watch tonight, guarding against the return of the wendigo. 

Nahanni moved quickly to the forest. She didn’t slow until she was surrounded by the trees. Once she was safe from spying eyes she slowed, and moved more carefully, not wanting to make any sound. She listened to the gathering darkness, alert for any noise that seemed out of place. She reached out with her other senses as well. She could feel the oppressive evil of the wendigo around her, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was a distant hum, like mosquitos in the darkness: an annoyance. But these blood suckers would do a lot more than leave an itchy welt on her skin. 

Nahanni stayed where she was until it was fully dark, and then she started to move. She silently followed the tree line, circling around the village in an arc from the bank of one river to the other. She stayed hidden in the trees, not wanting to be seen in the moonlight by any of the sentries. She knew that they would be watching this approach to the village carefully. 

After completing her arc through the trees, Nahanni came back to a point about mid way along it that let her see the two places where the trees came closest to the stockade. There had been closer approaches, but they had already been cut back. 

Nahanni’s experience a couple of nights earlier had shown her that it was nearly impossible to fight while wearing snowshoes, so she removed hers. The open ground close to the stockade had been packed by the men clearing the trees. Nahanni and Ashiwut had spent much of the day traipsing these woods, leaving lots of trails through the snow, trails to make it difficult for the wendigo to pick out the path that she had taken tonight, and trails that she would be able to move along quickly without her snowshoes on. She settled down to wait. 

* * *

The night was mostly gone. The nearly full moon was setting in the west. Nahanni was cold, and she was starting to have trouble staying awake. She reached into her pouch, and pulled out the last of the pemmican she had brought with her. She was raising it to her mouth when she heard the sound of a twig snapping. 

Nahanni froze, not even breathing while she listened. She heard more faint sounds, coming from somewhere off to her right. She dropped the pemmican, and quickly shed her mittens and parka, opting for the freedom of motion that gave her over their warmth. She would be getting plenty of exercise to keep her warm. She strung her bow, and moved quickly down the path that led toward the sound. 

Nahanni slowed as she neared the path that the wendigo were taking. She could feel them now, as well as hear the noise they were making: the quiet squeaking of the snow beneath their feet. She crouched down behind some low brush, peering into the darkness, and saw shadows moving across her path. She waited, and counted the wendigo as they passed. She saw seven of them. 

Six of the wendigo continued toward the village. One of them stayed behind. They obviously felt that Nahanni’s path was suspicious. She watched it move off the trail, and bury itself in the snow, to ambush anyone trying to come up behind them. 

Nahanni considered her options. If she killed the rear guard now, the noise would no doubt alert the others to her presence. She also didn’t think that she could get a clear shot at its heart with it buried in the snow the way it was. She would have to try to sneak up on it. On the other hand she could see the six wendigo approaching the stockade, and they would have to break out into the open before they could reach it. She would have a clear shot at them then. She thought that she could get at least two of them before the guard wendigo could get itself up out of the snow, and then she’d have a clear shot at it. 

She crouched waiting, she had forgotten that she’d been feeling cold a few moments ago. Her heart was beating faster—in anticipation of what was to come—and she felt warm. She watched the wendigo wind through the trees, until they reached the open space before the fence. They paused there for a few heartbeats, no doubt watching for the sentries who would be looking out from the village. Three wendigo suddenly dashed forward. Two of them stopped at the stockade. They lowered their hands, making steps for the third, and then lifted it up, so it could grab at the top of the stockade fence. The wendigo was pulling itself up over it when Nahanni’s arrow pierced its back. The shriek of it exploding into dust cut through the silent night. 

Nahanni fired off two more arrows in quick succession, each one finding the heart of one of the surprised wendigo by the stockade. She nocked a fourth arrow, and turned toward the wendigo that was charging toward her. It was nearly on her when she shot. This wendigo leapt just as she was releasing the arrow, and instead of its heart the arrow passed through the demon’s stomach. Nahanni didn’t have time to draw another arrow, or a stake. She dropped her bow into the snow, and caught the wendigo with her hands. 

Nahanni fell back, pulling the wendigo with her. Her foot came up into its stomach as she rolled. She propelled it over her, throwing its back against a tree. The stunned wendigo crashed head first onto the ground. Nahanni drew a stake, and struck its heart before it could move again. 

There were shouts coming from inside the village. Nahanni stood and looked around. She could see that the wendigo were retreating. She could see men on the stockade shooting arrows at them. One of the men must have seen her move, for an arrow whistled past her in the dark. She grabbed her bow and ran deeper into the trees, moving in the direction that the wendigo were going. 

The wendigo were moving quickly, sticking to a trail that would take them to the river near where their first ambush had been. Nahanni ran after them, slowly gaining ground. She drew another arrow, and shot it on the run. The wendigo she hit stumbled, but it continued to run. She shot again, and again she missed the heart. 

They were nearly to the river when Nahanni felt more wendigo up ahead. She wanted to continue her pursuit, but she had no idea how many of the creatures she might be facing, and she didn’t want to run headlong into an ambush. She slowed, and started to move forward more carefully, alert for any sign. 

She heard splashing up ahead, and the feeling that the wendigo were near started to fade. It had dropped down into the general background hum by the time she reached the river bank herself. She could see the tracks of five wendigo entering the water. She remembered that this was the same place that Mandokee had gone into the river, and disappeared. Wendigo didn’t need to breathe, and they weren’t affected by the cold the way people were. She knew that they could travel a long way beneath the ice. Thinking about that, Nahanni started to wonder why the wendigo bothered with winter clothing at all. 

The eastern sky was turning pink when Nahanni got back to where she had left her parka and snowshoes. She was also starting to feel the cold again, and was happy to draw the heavy coat around herself. She picked up the piece of pemmican she had dropped in the snow, and started to chew on it as she made her way back to the stockade gate. 


	9. Hunting

Nahanni knocked lightly on the gate. “It’s me,” she whispered. “Let me in.” 

The gate opened a crack, and she saw Ashiwut. Tokopaw was behind him, with his bow held ready, while Ashiwut checked for Nahanni’s reflection in the mirror. Only then did he smile. “It’s Nahanni,” he told Tokopaw, and released the rope to let the gate be opened by more than the crack he had looked through. “How was the hunt?” he asked her. 

“I killed four,” said Nahanni. “There were three more trying to get into the village. I chased them as far as the river, where they met with two more. They all escaped into the water.” 

“Mandokee?” asked Ashiwut. 

Nahanni shook her head. “I didn’t see him. He wasn’t one of the ones I killed, or chased. He might have been at the river, I didn’t see those two, only heard them, and saw their tracks.” 

“We must tell Moguago,” said Tokopaw. 

Nahanni yawned. “You tell him. I need to sleep.” She took hold of Ashiwut’s arm and pulled him with her toward their lodge. She also wanted to wrestle. 

* * *

Nahanni lay with Ashiwut in their bed. They’d had a good wrestle, and had gotten some sleep, and now she just lay with him, and held him. She could hear the morning activities of the village going on outside their lodge, but no one had disturbed them. Everyone knew that Ashiwut had been awake all night. 

“Why do they wear winter clothes?” she asked suddenly. 

“What?” 

“The wendigo. Why do they wear winter clothes?” 

“To stay warm,” said Ashiwut. 

“But Grandmother says that the cold doesn’t affect them like us,” said Nahanni. “And I lost their trail because they escaped into the river. If they can tolerate the cold of the water, why wear heavy winter clothes at all?” 

“They can still freeze,” said Ashiwut. “It won’t kill them—when they thaw out again they will be able to move again—but while they are frozen, they are helpless. A child could kill them. A wendigo gets warmth from the blood it drinks, and it must conserve that warmth, just as we do, so it wears warm clothes.” 

“How can they go into the river, without freezing?” 

“As long as they are immersed in running water, they will not get so cold that they will freeze solid. They will still be able to move,” said Ashiwut. “But they will need a blood meal very quickly after they emerge.” 

“Perhaps we should be looking for where they came out of the water,” said Nahanni. 

“Perhaps.” 

* * *

Nahanni was back at the river by noon, but she wasn’t alone. Moguago, Ashiwut, and the four other warriors who knew about her being the Protector were with her. They split up into four groups, one to search in each direction on each side of the river, looking for any sign of where the wendigo left the water. Nahanni and Ashiwut were searching upstream, on the far side of the river when they heard a shout from Tokopaw, who was searching downstream. He had found something. 

When they got there they found Tokopaw and Moguago by a hole in the ice that was masked by the branches of a fallen tree. Tracks in the snow led from the hole into a narrow ravine where they were hidden from view by anyone who wasn’t right on top of them. They searched the area while they waited for the others to arrive. Nahanni found a skin bladder lying beside a rock, it was stained with blood. She could see that the wendigo had been in too much of a hurry to drink from its neck. It had bitten right through it to get at the blood it had contained, and then thrown away the ruined bladder. 

Nahanni started to follow the tracks into the ravine. 

“Wait,” said Ashiwut. He didn’t like the look of the place. It was too narrow, and it was shaded enough to protect the wendigo from the sunlight. “It could be a trap.” 

“I don’t feel the wendigo nearby,” said Nahanni. 

“There could still be a trap,” said Ashiwut. “A deadfall, or something.” 

“I’ll be careful.” Nahanni started to move forward more cautiously, with Ashiwut following her, her eyes probing the shadows for any sign of a possible trap. She saw a place up ahead where the snow didn’t look quite right. She looked around, and saw a heavy rock. She picked it up and threw it. 

There was a _snap_ when the rock hit the snow, and a log fell from up over the lip of the ravine, and smashed down into the snow where her rock had hit. “Definitely a trap,” said Nahanni. 

“There could be others, farther in,” said Ashiwut. “There is no need to follow in this ravine. Let’s follow it from up top. They won’t be able to leave it without leaving tracks. Then we can follow them to their lair.” 

They returned to the mouth of the ravine, and told the others what they had found. Moguago agreed with their plan to follow the wendigo’s trail. 

They split into two groups to follow along each side of the ravine as it wound away from the river. The ravine got shallower, the farther they went, until it became little more than a shallow creek bed, and their two groups came back together. The tracks of the wendigo stayed in the bottom of it. 

“They are travelling by daylight, if they came this far,” said Tokopaw. “They are staying in the creek bed for protection from the sun.” 

“Yes,” said Nahanni. “I had hoped that they would go to ground, somewhere nearby, and we could rout them out of their daytime lair.” 

“Still, travelling by day will be difficult for them,” said Ashiwut. “They may not have gone much farther.” 

They kept following the tracks, and it soon became apparent that the wendigo hadn’t gone to ground. The trail kept leading them farther east, away from the village. They stopped from time to time for Tokopaw to examine the tracks more closely. He declared that they were gaining on their quarry. The tracks were fresher now. The wendigo were taking the time to pick their path to take them through the most shaded parts of the forest. They pursued them into the afternoon. 

Moguago called a halt at mid afternoon. “I don’t like this.” 

“We are getting closer!” said Nahanni. “If we hurry, we can catch them!” 

“Tokopaw, do you think we can catch the wendigo before sunset?” 

“Perhaps, but as the shadows grow, they will be able to move more quickly.” 

Moguago frowned. “I think we have followed this trail far enough. If we don’t turn around now, we will not be able to get back to the village until after sunset.” 

“But they’ll get away!” said Nahanni. 

“I don’t like this,” said Moguago. “This trail has been too easy to follow. They have made no effort to mask their tracks, or to split up, to make it more difficult for us to follow.” 

“You think that they are leading us into a trap?” asked Ashiwut. 

“Perhaps…or they are simply leading us away from the village. They could have doubled back. Lead us away so they can attack the village while we are gone.” 

Nahanni wanted to object. She didn’t want to give up now, after coming so far, but some instinct told her that Moguago was right. “We have to go back.” 

* * *

Nahanni’s sense of urgency grew as they made their way back the way they had come. They had waited too long, and the sun had set when they reached the river. She could feel the wendigo up ahead, and she broke into a run. 


	10. Battle

Nahanni paused as soon as she reached the beaten path on the other side of the river. She wouldn’t need her snowshoes from here on. She didn’t take the time to untie them. She used her knife to slash the bindings free from her feet before she started to run again, discarding her mittens and parka as she went. 

She could hear the sounds of the fight before she reached the village. The over-excited calls of men yelling to each other, the inhuman snarls of wendigo, the cries of frightened children. She paused for a moment at the edge of the forest, to see what was happening before she rushed in. 

The village gate was standing open. She could see the light of a fire burning inside the stockade, and the black smoke rising from it. She saw someone stumble out through the gate, their clothes on fire. She thought at first that it was a man, but the fire suddenly flared brighter, and she heard the unmistakable sound of a wendigo dying. She ran forward. 

When Nahanni entered the village she saw several knots of men and wendigo fighting. Some of the men and older boys were armed with torches—using them to keep the wendigo back—while others with bows tried to shoot the wendigo with arrows. The largest group was protecting the longhouse, keeping half a dozen wendigo from setting fire to it, as they had apparently done to some of the smaller lodges. 

Nahanni’s quick count showed a dozen wendigo, and twice as many defenders. She could see several people were down, lying unmoving in the snow. She had no idea how many wendigo had started this attack, but another vanished as someone’s arrow found its heart. 

Nahanni charged at the backs of the group of wendigo in front of the longhouse, with a stake in each hand. She killed two of them before any of the wendigo knew she was there. 

The remaining four wendigo snarled as they turned to face her. They attacked. Nahanni leapt into the air and kicked out with her feet at the two closest. Their heads snapped back and they fell to the ground. Nahanni ducked under the lunge of a third wendigo, and plunged one of her stakes into its chest. Her stake caught in its ribs, and she couldn’t pull it free before the wendigo exploded into dust, taking her stake with it. 

Nahanni transferred her remaining stake to her right hand while she backed away, keeping her eyes on the wendigo, waiting for them to come to her. The wendigo she had kicked came back to their feet slowly, all of their attention focused on her. One of the warriors took advantage of that, and put an arrow into one of their backs. 

The wendigo knew that the tide had turned in this battle. A third of their number was gone. Some of them broke toward the gate. They were met by Ashiwut, Moguago and the others who had been running after Nahanni. 

Nahanni kept her attention on the two wendigo in front of her. She struck at one of them, but this wendigo had learned from the deaths of its fellows, and dodged away from her. Nahanni whipped around toward the other, and sank her stake into its heart. 

The last wendigo looked at Nahanni for a second before it turned and ran. Nahanni chased after it. She leapt, and landed on the wendigo’s back. It stumbled, and fell to the ground. She drove her stake into its back. 

Nahanni’s stake vanished with the wendigo. She looked up and saw a knot of men and wendigo fighting by the gate. She heard cries behind her, coming from the longhouse. She heard Sebequa’s voice crying out. “ _Mandokee! No!_ ” 

Nahanni looked around. The wendigo still alive in the village were surrounded by men. The hunters had become the hunted. There was little hope for any of them. She dashed into the longhouse. 

Most of the village’s women and children had taken shelter here. Nahanni’s eyes probed the darkness, looking for Mandokee. She saw him near the back of the longhouse, his mouth on the neck of a child. Sebequa was lying on the floor nearby. 

Mandokee looked up and saw Nahanni. He threw the limp body of the child aside and rose to his feet, snarling, blood dripping down his chin. “They say the blood of the Protector is sweeter than any child’s!” 

“You will never know,” said Nahanni. 

Mandokee growled and charged at her. Nahanni stood her ground, waiting for him. Mandokee leapt the last few yards, his hands reaching out toward her, his fingers crooked into talons. She grabbed him and pivoted, slamming his body down hard against the ground. If he had been a man, it would have knocked the breath out of him, but Mandokee had no breath. He rolled back to his feet and attacked her again. He was met by her foot in his face. 

Nahanni looked around for a weapon with which to kill Mandokee, but there was nothing near her. She saw the cooking fire burning in the nearby pit. She looked back at Mandokee, who was rubbing his chin, and smiling at her. “It takes more than dancing to kill me.” 

“You’re already dead,” said Nahanni. 

“And you’re going to join me.” Mandokee charged again. 

This time Nahanni held on after she grabbed Mandokee, and they both fell to the ground together. She rolled with him, toward the fire. Mandokee seemed intent on getting his fangs into her throat, and didn’t notice the flames until Nahanni pressed the back of his head into them. 

Mandokee howled, and struggled to break free as his hair caught fire. Nahanni held on, ignoring the pain in her fingers from the heat, pressing his head down into the coals. Mandokee screamed, as he burst into flames, and turned into ash in Nahanni’s hands. 

Nahanni pulled back her hands, and looked at them. Her skin was red, and she saw some blisters starting to rise on her knuckles, but she wasn’t badly burned. She turned to the child Mandokee had been feeding from and saw she was held in her mother’s arms. The woman was crying, and holding the girl’s head to her breast, and rocking her body in her arms. Nahanni knew that there was nothing that could be done for the child, and turned her attention to Sebequa. She was lying still on the ground, but Nahanni could see that she was breathing. She motioned to Kishegaequa. “Come, take care of Sebequa.” she looked toward the door of the longhouse. She could still hear the sounds of fighting coming from outside. “I have more wendigo to kill.” 

The last of the surviving wendigo had just broken free from the circle of men who had surrounded them, and were running toward the gate when Nahanni got outside. They were chased by half a dozen arrows being shot by the warriors. A wendigo exploded into dust, leaving only one. Nahanni ran after it. 

Nahanni snatched a stake from Ashiwut’s hand as she passed him. He was too startled to follow right away. She heard his shout as she passed through the gate, but she ignored it. She wasn’t going to let this wendigo get away again. 

The wendigo was making for the river, hoping to escape into the water. Nahanni had no intention of letting that happen. She put all of her effort into her running. She knew she would catch it before it could escape. 

The wendigo seemed to know it too. It suddenly stopped, and turned to face her. Nahanni recognized her father’s face beneath the brow ridges and fangs. She saw the ridges and fangs fade, and she saw him smile at her. 

She knew that this time, she wouldn’t be fooled into hesitating. This thing in front of her wasn’t her father. It was a monster, whose kind had killed her friends, and a little child. She snarled as she leapt at him, sounding like a wendigo herself. 

The wendigo who had been her father Makee was ready for her attack. It shifted its weight, and twisted as she struck. Her stake sank into its chest, but it was wide of its heart. 

Makee continued to twist, and grabbed onto Nahanni as he did so. Her stake was wrenched from her hand, still stuck in the body of the wendigo. It slammed her down onto the hard packed snow of the path, stunning her for a moment. The wendigo was on top of her before she could recover, its fangs sinking into her neck. 

Part of Nahanni wanted to stop. Just lie there, and let the wendigo steal her life. She knew that that was part of the wendigo’s magic. Their victims stopped struggling when the wendigo’s fangs entered their bodies. She felt at peace. She just had to do nothing. It was so simple. She felt herself slipping away. 

A vision flashed through her mind. A dark skinned girl, with straggly curls of hair hanging from her head. Her face was painted with grey. Nahanni heard her snarl. She remembered the hunt: chasing through the forest. She remembered the feel of a stake sinking into the heart of a wendigo. She felt the pain of the wendigo’s fangs in her neck. 

Nahanni brought her knee up into the wendigo’s crotch with all of her strength. The force of the blow was enough to lift the wendigo off her, even without the effect that blow had on a male. 

Nahanni rolled to her feet, and drew her knife. She ignored the feel of her blood, still running from the wound in her neck. She looked at the wendigo, with her blood staining its lips. 

The wendigo’s eyes flicked to her knife, and she saw it smile. “I gave you that knife, Little Bird. Now you think you will kill me with it? I’m not afraid of a blade.” It lunged toward her. 

Nahanni’s knife slashed through the air. It was a moment that she had dreamt about a dozen times. The blade cut into the demon’s throat. “You should be,” she snarled. 

Makee stopped, looking stunned. Nahanni knew that her knife hadn’t cut all the way through his throat, not enough to kill the demon, anyway. It was enough to stop it though, and make it unable to avoid her next slash. This time she felt the obsidian blade of her knife break as it struck the bone in the wendigo’s neck, but it had finished its job. The wendigo dissolved into a cloud of dust, that vanished on the night wind. 

Nahanni looked down, and saw the broken blade of her knife lying in the snow. For some reason she felt that it was essential that she pick it up. It was a good blade, she could still make a new knife with it. It wouldn’t be as good as the knife she had broken, but it would still make a good knife. She knelt down to pick it up. 

Nahanni staggered as she stood back up. She felt dizzy, and felt something sticking her jacket to her skin. She looked down and saw a red streak running down the front of her jacket, across her breast. She wondered for a second what it was, before she felt another twinge of pain from her neck, and she knew it was her blood. 

She knelt down and grabbed a handful of snow to press against her neck. Another wave of dizziness washed over her as she stood up again. She stood still, swaying on her feet a bit before it passed. She started back down the path to the village. 

The village seemed to be much farther away now, than it had been when she had been chasing the wendigo. She had to stop a couple of times to lean against a tree to keep from falling over. At least her neck had stopped bleeding. Her first handful of snow had all melted away, washing the blood from her neck as it did so. She didn’t notice any more running down from the wound. Her skin felt clammy, and cold. She found the parka and mittens that she had discarded earlier, and pulled them back on. They made her feel warmer, but it still seemed to be a long way back to the village. 

* * *

Nahanni woke up in the warmth of her bed, she lay still for a moment, trying to remember how she got there. She had a vague memory of having fallen into a snowbank, and then the sound of Ashiwut calling her, but at first she couldn’t remember why she had fallen. The memory of her fight with her father suddenly came flooding back. She sat up quickly, and winced in pain, both from her head, and her neck. Her hand went to her wound, and she felt the dressing that had been placed over it. She was naked, but she could see her clothes were hung by the fire, as if to dry. They looked like they had been washed, but she could see the stains from her blood on them. She got out of bed and felt them, expecting to find them still damp, but she was surprised to find them dry. She got dressed quickly, and went out to go to the latrine. 

Nahanni looked around the village when she was finished in the latrine. With that taken care of, she was feeling hungry, and thirsty. The village was strangely empty, and silent. She wondered where everyone could be, but then she heard a faint sound carried on the wind. She forgot about her stomach. It was the sound of a funeral chant. 

When she reached the funeral grounds, Nahanni saw that there were several bodies on raised platforms. She could see the villagers gathered around them, and she saw Ashiwut placing the torch into the wood piled beneath the platforms. She wondered why he was doing this. Conducting funerals was one of Grandmother’s duties, but then she recognized the robes that one of the bodies was wrapped in: Grandmother’s finest. She couldn’t recognize any of the other bodies before the rising smoke obscured them, but she had seen that one of them was very small, and she remembered the child, Eshshawwat, that Mandokee had cast aside before he had attacked her. 

Nahanni moved up beside Ashiwut. He was surprised to see her, for a moment, but he didn’t say anything. She joined the rest of the village in their wailing for the departed. 

They stayed until the fires started to burn down, the bodies consumed by the flames. Nahanni hadn’t brought her broken knife with her when she left the village, so she borrowed Ashiwut’s for what she needed to do. She used his knife to cut off the long braid of her hair, and then she threw the braid into the burning fire, to be burned with Grandmother’s earthly remains, so that part of her would go with her Grandmother’s spirit. 


	11. Epilogue: Destiny

Nahanni ran. She had been running since shortly before sunrise and had covered a couple of miles along the path that ran along the river bank. She came to the ravine where the creek—swollen to a torrent by the spring run-off—tumbled down over the rocks, and she turned away from the river to follow it. She ran up along the creek, climbing the ravine to the top of the cliff. The path she would normally have taken was mostly flooded, but that wasn’t a problem for her. She leapt as agilely as a mountain goat over the flooded portions, finding footholds in the rocks that would have eluded nearly anyone else. She turned back when she reached the top, following the edge of the cliff overlooking the river until she came to the clearing. 

She stopped. She took a couple of deep breaths, and her heart pounding beneath her breast calmed. She stood on the cliff top with the river below her. The morning sun had risen a little way over the horizon to her right, and the frost was starting to melt under its warmth. The snow was gone from the clearing, but there were still drifts of it lingering in the shadows under the trees. The trees were just starting to show the green buds of new leaves. The sky was bright blue, without a cloud in sight. She could hear the roar of the waterfall just a little farther up the river, and see the mist from it around the outcrop of rock. It was louder now than it had been for months, with the river at the height of its spring flood. 

Nahanni sat on her rock, listening to the world around her. She could hear a doe moving through the underbrush behind her, with its fawn. The summer birds were returning to the trees, looking for good nesting sites, and singing for their mates. 

She reached out with her other senses, trying to feel for the presence of the wendigo, but she could feel nothing, as she had felt nothing since she had killed her father. Part of her always felt that way: she knew that her father had died many years before, but in her heart he hadn’t truly been dead, until she had cut his head from his shoulders. Her hand went to the knife at her belt. It had been refashioned: its blade was only half as long as it had been before it had broken, but it was still a good knife. She hoped to get many more years of use from it. 

But she wouldn’t be using it here. This might be the last time that she sat on this rock, looking out over the land in which she had spent all of her life, and to which she might never return. She had never travelled beyond the horizon that was stretched out around her. She knew the land that she could see well, but beyond that horizon was a mystery that she had only heard stories about. 

One of those stories had come down the river shortly after the spring break-up—much earlier than travellers normally risked the river, but the need was great. There was a demon stalking another village, several days journey upstream. They had sent the message as soon as it was possible, much sooner than any prudent person would have braved the icy river waters. 

She and Ashiwut would be going soon. It might have been foolhardy to travel down the river during the flood, but it was quite impossible to travel up it. They would have to wait for another week or two for the waters to recede, but they were going. Nahanni knew that she would miss this cliff. She would miss her friends in the village. She was nervous about the thought of travelling farther than she had ever thought she would, but this wasn’t her home anymore. It wasn’t her village. She didn’t have just one home or village anymore; she had to go where she was needed. 

She was the Protector. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about the geography of this story: 
> 
> The environs of Nahanni's village is roughly based on the area around what is modern day Ottawa, Canada. The big river is the Ottawa River, the smaller river is the Rideau. I removed the Rideau Falls, where the Rideau enters the Ottawa. Nahanni's clearing on the bluff overlooking the river is about where the Library of Parliament is located. 


End file.
